The Craze to Canonize Mike Wallace

Day after day, the big news — according to Yahoo, CNN, the old TV networks, and all the self-important newspapers — has been the sad demise of Mike Wallace, at the young age of 93.

Always he is called the “legendary” Mike Wallace, as if “legendary” were a title like Grand Exalted First Convener of the Muskrats’ Fraternal and Benevolent Association — an honorary title that for form’s sake must always be prefixed to the real name. Sounds good, means nothing — except, I’m afraid, to the fraternity of “newspeople” who put out this stuff.

Fools like Wallace were, and are, appointed to parrot the common opinions of a small circle of “opinion leaders.”

The man was a legend? He was a television “correspondent.” How can a man who read the news (or purported news) be the subject of some mysterious legend? If “legendary” is taken literally, it can only mean that to most Americans, his very being was mysterious; until now, most living people didn’t even know he existed. But to read the “news,” one would think that American peasants sat around the hearth fire every night, spinning yarns about Mike the Great.

Fortunately for the nation’s sanity, one of Wallace’s real, uh, um, accomplishments has now resurfaced. It’s a documentary about homosexuality that he concocted for CBS in 1967. In it, he opined:

“The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of heterosexual marriage. His sex life — his love life — consists of chance encounters at the clubs and bars he inhabits, and even on the streets of the city. The pickup — the one night stand — these are the characteristics of the homosexual relationship.”

That was grossly and offensively untrue. It is untrue now; it was untrue then. It was known to be untrue to people who actually knew any gay people (which, however, Wallace did), or had read a book that went deeper into the mysteries of sexuality than, say, the collected sermons of Pope Pius XII. Wallace later insisted:

“That is — God help us — what our understanding of the homosexual lifestyle was a mere twenty-five years ago because nobody was out of the closet and because that’s what we heard from doctors.”

But supposing it’s true that “nobody was out of the closet” (and some of the people whom Wallace encountered were out of the closet), and also that this is what everyone understood (which it wasn’t): why, if Wallace knew nothing more than the falsehoods that everybody else — i.e., “we” — appeared to know, did he appoint himself to announce those falsehoods from the papal chair of CBS, as if they were news?

Here’s what’s going on. Fools like Wallace were, and are, appointed to parrot the common opinions — that is, the callow beliefs, misinformed notions, strange hunches, weird superstitions, and flat-out hysterias — of a small circle of “opinion leaders.” That is the “we.” These people are not particularly well educated. They know little or nothing about history. They aren’t curious about it, either. Their knowledge of science (“what we heard from doctors”) is extremely limited and completely unskeptical. If they read a book, they look for something that will confirm their pre-existing views, especially their assumption that everything important or “legendary” will naturally pertain to people like themselves. They know little of normal human life, by which I mean not only the vast field of sexuality but also such commonplace and obvious matters as how money is made, the nature of governmental power, normal forms and practices of religious belief, the fact that people actually enjoy getting drunk (I have an academic book on my table that attempts to explain why people drink), the various reasons why people value guns and other means of self-defense, the reasons why young families might want to live in the suburbs instead of some “green” high-rise, the resistance of parents to new-fangled notions of education, and above all, the sullen resistance of normal people to being “educated” by dopes like Wallace.

Yet these people — the “we” — are advertised (by themselves!) as heroes and “legends.”

You can say this about every broadcasting or newspaper “legend” you find. Cronkite. Murrow. And the next one who dies. He’ll get no eulogies from me.

About this Author

Stephen Cox is editor of Liberty, and a professor of literature at the University of California San Diego. His recent books include The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison and American Christianity: The Continuing Revolution. Newly published is Culture and Liberty, a selection of works by Isabel Paterson.